Implementing Extensibility in Campaigns

In general, Extensibility helps you customize or create applications and their User Interfaces (UIs), as well as data objects. While the extension of already existing system data, like business objects, is done using Custom Field extensions, the logical enhancements of dedicated processing steps is done using Custom Logic definitions.

The Marketing Extensibility application can be accessed as a central starting point for extensibility tasks. With this app, a central cockpit is provided to further drive extensibility related tasks, including assignments of newly created fields and custom business objects (CBO), as well as quick jumps to other applications for creation or monitoring functionality.

To create a field for the Business Object Campaign, simply choose the context Marketing: Campaign in the Custom Fields or Marketing Extensibility apps.

If the goal is to extend the meta or marketing information for your campaign object, this selection is appropriate. Besides this, it is possible to create fields in the context of Marketing: Campaign Performance for completely new dimensions, or new defined fields used as actual and target measures at the campaign level.

We have learned how to create a custom field earlier (See Unit 2 - Extending Your SAP Marketing Cloud Solution).

How to Create a Custom Field

To create custom logic, open the Custom Logic app. You then need to select the appropriate Business Context, as is the case for custom field creation. The naming convention supports the user here – all marketing related contexts start with Marketing:.

1. To create a field for the Business Context Campaigns, simply chose the context Marketing: Campaign, where you will find the various BAdIs (Business Add-Ins) available for selection. As a reminder: A BAdI is a piece of code defining the logic for a specific processing step of the SAP Marketing Cloud within the chosen business context for a new enhancement implementation.
2. After the window-dialog of the custom logic creation in the first step, the editor opens for an ABAP-based coding view.

Implementation Example

The code editor not only shows the available data fields for setting example parameters with regards to the campaign object, but a user may also view BAdI documentation and a code example within the editor. With these supporting features, the draft logic can be tested at any time and show you results immediately. In addition, you can view warnings and error messages about your code while editing and modifying your logic based on the message alerts. As in custom field creation, the custom logic needs to be published after successfully testing to be available for use in SAP Marketing Cloud.​

To get a full list of the BAdIs and marketing campaign contexts available in the system, please read through our documentation on SAP Help Portal or use the documentation for each BAdI in the code editor within the application.

Open Channel is a powerful way to create and push your own actions out of a campaign flow to an external system of your choice, open Interfaces, and platforms like the SAP Business Technology Platform, which allow you to define and trigger externalized logic and applications. Actions created on the SAP Business Technology Platform can be a way to improve the architecture with a modular approach.

Letter shops, mobile apps, or service portals are examples for such integration. BAdIs for custom logic automation using Open Channel actions are provided by SAP Marketing Cloud out of the box. The inbound side of the Open Channel Integration covers the possibility of ingesting and bringing back external data to your SAP Marketing Cloud system.

For more information, please visit SAP Help Portal and check out the Integration Guide.

Setting Up the Open Channel Integration

To learn how to set up the open channel integration, review the following steps. Each step corresponds to a number in the process flow diagram below.

1. Check that the business catalog role Marketing – Segmentation and Campaign Configuration (SAP_CEC_BC_MKT_CPC_PC) has been assigned to your user.
2. Adapt the enhancements (required for outbound). For a minimal integration, you need only implement the enhancement (1) Open Channel: Define Implementations and define an Implementation ID. For more information, see documentation on help.sap.com.
3. Set up the SAP Business Technology Platform (required for outbound). For more information, see documentation on help.sap.com.
4. Create the communication systems and arrangements for the outbound side (required for outbound). For more information, see documentation on help.sap.com.
5. Set up the SAP Business Technology Platform according to your needs (required for outbound). For more information on this step and the ones following, see Inbound Service Settings API.
6. Adapt the enhancement (5) Open Channel: Define template for Outbound Interaction (required for inbound). For more information, see Processing Details and Inbound Service Settings API.
7. Create communication systems and arrangements for the inbound side (required for inbound).
8. Depending on how you set up your integration and to be able to use the Open Channel action in your system, you create an export definition.